Lanning: Nintendo Will Be Around For "100 Years", Not Microsoft Or Zynga

Lorne Lanning has been coming out with some cracking quotes of late. This latest one sees the Oddworld creator praising Satoru Iwata and Nintendo for bucking the current trend of cyclically firing one's development staff, and he suggests that it is this creative-centric outlook that will mean Nintendo survive for years to come, rather than companies such as Zynga and Microsoft.

“When Satoru Iwata came out and said people were asking him, ‘When are you gonna lay off your development staff? ‘ I don’t remember exactly what he said, but it was basically: ‘Laying off development is not going to solve our problems. Building great games is what we do and we’re going to continue doing it'," Lanning told VentureBeat.

“When he said that, in my opinion, he was immortalized in the creative community. I would work with him in a second. When a man in that type of position, in a world where the golden rule is the rule and that’s what’s expected at public companies, he stood up and said: ‘That’s not what we’re about. We’re about building great stuff. We have great people to build great stuff. We’re gonna do that.’

“When I look at the history of Nintendo, I say,’Nintendo is gonna be here in 100 years.’ I have no doubt. I doubt Microsoft will be here in 100 years. I know Zynga won’t be here in 100 years. I’ve been here longer than Zynga.

“We’re not making headlines in the Wall Street Journal, but we’re still building what we set out to build. Now we have to be clever and smaller in how we think, but we’re more self-empowered than we’ve ever been.”

Let's be more creative by keeping the old staff and the old IPs going for years (decades) past their best-before date?

I have a lot of love for Nintendo. They're not scared to try new things when it comes to the hardware - though they're very staid in their software. And they're tenacious - they've been around for about a hundred and thirty years or so by adapting to what the market wants; so they are very capable of being around for many years to come. Doubt the company will look anything like it currently does, but that's the key to survival.

There's a world of difference, though, between being around for a long time, and being the best - and in the last decade or so Nintendo have been third best in the console market. That's consoles on your telly, of course - they still rock at handhelds. (Third if you don't count PCs. Fourth best if we include front room computers.)

I don't want the third or fourth best console plugged into my big telly. Sorry Nintendo.

Provided Iwata doesn't get forced out by shareholders for his policy, who subsequently bring in a more traditional CEO to run the show, I think Lanning could be right: they'll survive because the brand is strong.

I agree with Davidpanik too: the Nintendo brand will stand the test of time in large part because of their Mario legacy. Above any other game character, he's the one that exemplifies what's best about gaming as a whole: creativity, fun, family, innovation and very high quality experiences.